Managing forests for the future – Can selection harvesting balance the needs for forest production and climate change mitigation?

Rotation forestry with clear cutting is the most common silvicultural practice in Sweden, but questions have been raised about its ability to contribute to long-term sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere.

In particular, it leaves large portions of the landscape with low carbon stocks and it releases significant carbon to the atmosphere for some decades after the cutting.

Due to the urgent need for nature-based climate change mitigation options, there is now considerable social and scientific interest in the use of selective cutting, or continuous-cover forestry, but its effects on carbon sequestration are largely unknown.

We plan to use novel methodologies based on sap flux and stable isotopes to study the carbon fluxes in Norway spruce stands of different age (0, 30 and 70-years). The goal is to determine whether and by how much carbon uptake capacity is sacrificed as forests grow older.

We will also investigate if a selectively cut stand is able to compensate for the carbon stock lost following clearcutting by increased growth and, if so, how. The novel methodology will be compared to the time-tested eddy covariance method.

Both methods estimate forest carbon uptake in photosynthesis, but the isotopic method also allows for determining how individual uncut trees respond to the selection cutting.

This project will support rigorous, objective analyses of one of the most compelling social issues in Scandinavia: what is to be done with the forests?​